When Wayne was a Whippersnapper: Dr. Stepfield and ginseng

By PAUL LOCHER
Staff WriterPublished: December 23, 2012 4:00AM

CHIPPEWA TWP. -- Everyone knows what is grown in Wayne County -- corn, soybeans, potatoes, wheat, oats and so forth.

But in the late 1800s one of the county's most colorful characters of the day, Dr. Alexander E. Stepfield, a native of Elmira, N.Y., where he was born on Dec. 5, 1857, felt the county should promote the cultivation of ginseng.

Stepfield, who at the time owned several farms in Chippewa Township totaling about 250 acres, was a large tobacco grower, averaging around 15 acres a year for the growing of that leaf.

But Stepfield saw real economic possibilities in the growing of ginseng. And so he became one of the first people in the county to start a "ginseng garden," and by the turn of the century was growing about 300,000 plants on five acres.

Dr. Stepfield's enthusiasm for the crop proved to be contagious, and it wasn't long before several other Chippewa Township farmers were dabbling in ginseng cultivation.

One of the other early growers was John Seaver, who is said to have laid out the first actual ginseng garden in the area. He was followed by Saul Dannemiller and others, shortly before the popular "Harvester" magazine carried an article about growing ginseng, which kicked local enthusiasm up yet another notch.

Ginseng was believed to grow best under shade, so all of the open field areas used to grow the root - credited with a variety of medicinal properties -- were shaded with a lath structure or something similar. One local farmer, George Landis, grew his plants under sheets of metal taken from old freight car roofs, supported by wire.

The ginseng grown around Chippewa Township was dried and shipped to China where the plant was highly valued. The ginseng business actually flourished and prospered for a few decades, but folded around 1930 both because of power struggles in China, and because of changes to that country's tariff system.

But back to Dr. Stepfield. In 1891, he founded the "Tri-County News," which he edited for 2 1/2 years. This independent paper was said to have had a profound influence on Wayne County's politics for several years. In one of the paper's most notable campaigns, it declared the bond movement for the payment of an agricultural experiment station (today the OARDC) was unconstitutional, and the publication won out -- for a time.

Stepfield, who married Mrs. Metta W. (Lyon) Manter on May 5, 1888, owned most of the stock in the telephone exchange at Doylestown. He served a single term as Wayne County coroner from 1895-97 and built up a large medical practice with patients coming from throughout the region.